With a ceremony focused on the arts, Arras, the crowd, several ministers and family members paid tribute, on Sunday, October 13, to Dominique Bernard, the teacher murdered exactly one year ago by a radicalized Islamist former student. The ceremony began at 11 a.m., a symbolic moment in which Dominique Bernard, 57, was murdered on October 13, 2023 with several stab wounds by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a Russian from Ingushetia who was 20 years old at the time.
“A year ago, the Arras attack resonated throughout France, the Arras attack resonated throughout the world. We were suffocated, we were in shock, we were incomprehensible, declared the city’s mayor, Frédéric Leturque. A year later, we had to be there. A year later, we owed it to him to be there. A year later, we are together, we are still standing. »
In the presence of more than 2,000 people, the ceremony was held in the Place des Héros in Arras (Pas de Calais), in the same place where several thousand people had already gathered two days after the professor’s murder. Thought with people close to the teacher such as “cultural memory sequence”According to the mayor of Arras, the ceremony included different artistic performances, from a performance of Mozart’s K.285 quartet to a song by Damien Saez, children of paradise.
“I don’t want any more speeches. “Everything has been said”
“I attest that there is no human being except the one who fights tirelessly against hatred within and around him”read a friend of Dominique Bernard, taking up a text by the Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi. On stage, an artist created a large live canvas depicting a dove flying past a blue, white and red shape and the words “Liberty, equality, fraternity”.
Contemporary poetry and dance readings were also included in the program, which aimed to highlight “highlight the values of the Republic, freedom and coexistence”stressed Frédéric Leturque. The mayor was the only one who spoke, despite the presence of several members of the government, including the ministers of Justice, Didier Migaud, of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, and of National Education, Anne Genetet.
“I don’t want any more speeches. What’s the point? “Everything has been said”Isabelle Bernard explained to World. ” It’s out of the question “ that there is a political recovery, he also affirms The Voice of the Northin another interview also published on Saturday. The Head of State continues to greet in HE ” courage “HE “struggle” and the“love for the teaching profession” by Dominique Bernard. “Many French people recognized him as one of those teachers who change our lives”added Emmanuel Macron, believing that “the Republic lives, in every dawn, in every lesson, in every course, thanks to them [les professeurs] “.
A minute of silence in institutes and universities on Monday
“What a beautiful response than musicians, actors, dancers”she continues with The Voice of the Northadding that the other victims of October 13, 2023 “They also participated, through their ideas, in the construction of this tribute”. Another teacher and two school officials were injured. Aim : “Defend the humanist values defended by Dominique (…) to help young people get ahead, to prevent such unjust crimes from being committed again. » With this idea, she created, in her husband’s name, a literary prize for stories written by teenagers. Its first edition, open to 4-year-old studentsmy3my and 2of of Arras and its surroundings, has tolerance as its theme.
Dominique Bernard had taught for twenty-five years at the establishment where he died. “A lover of literature, he loved transmitting this love to his students”recalls his sister Emmanuelle Delatte in an interview with the Christian weekly the pilgrimpublished on Wednesday. “He considered that reading and writing contribute to making us free beings”continue.
A minute of silence will be observed on Monday in secondary and preparatory schools across France in tribute to Dominique Bernard and Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher also murdered by a radicalized Islamist on October 16, 2020, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines). ). When they learned of the murder of Samuel Paty, Isabelle Bernard remembers that her husband and herself had taken “awareness of [leur] vulnerability ». “Who will be next? Because there will be one”she told him.
